A Last Voyage Of The Demeter Sequel Already Lies In The Pages Of Bram Stoker's Dracula Book
Tell me if you've heard this one before.
A vampire hunter, a doctor, a rich guy, an American cowboy, an in-over-his-head solicitor, and a hypnotized woman with a psychic connection to history's greatest monster pursue Dracula across Europe. If that sounds like a pretty great movie — a proper "men on a mission" adventure film with a horror tinge — you'd be right. It sounds rad as hell. And it's the best part of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," one of the greatest horror novels ever written. After a couple hundred pages of being preyed upon, the cast of human characters take the fight back to the legendary vampire and have him on the run. And a magnificent chase (By boat! By train! By horseback!) ensues. Did I mention that Mina Harker, she of the above-mentioned psychic connection, guides the team using visions wrought out of her by hypnosis? It's thrilling stuff, and watching the hunted become the hunters feels downright cathartic (even though a cornered, desperate Dracula may be the most frightening Dracula of all).
But most film adaptations of "Dracula" either skip this section or trim in down considerably. The book's epic quest — its "Lord of the Rings" sequence, its "Dirty Dozen" moment, its Dungeons & Dragons campaign — almost always hits the cutting room floor. Thankfully, the mere existence of the new film "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" suggests a world where this portion of Stoker's novel can hit the big screen. Heck, it suggests a world where this section of the book could become its own movie.
Dracula remains untapped
Director André Øvredal's "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" is a unique "Dracula" film in that it doesn't adapt Stoker's entire novel. Instead, it adapts a single chapter of the book, and another sequence that is frequently overlooked (or considerably trimmed) in film adaptations. This chapter concerns the shipping vessel Demeter and the mysterious cargo it's carrying to London from Europe. Written as a series of Captain's Logs in Stoker's book (itself wholly an epistolary novel), we read, gripped with horror, as the crew of the ship realizes something has gone terribly wrong. That they're transporting something that is picking them off one-by-one. Of course, it's Dracula, making his way to England from Transylvania. No one on the ship has a happy ending.
No matter what you think about the film itself (/Film's review is mixed, but fairly positive), the film proves that Dracula, and Stoker's novel, are far from dusty. There's plenty to be mined and explored in the margins of a novel that everyone thinks has been done to death. The truth is that so much Dracula cinema leans on Bela Lugosi's rightfully legendary performance and the 1931 Universal film that contains it, but that version was largely based on a stage adaptation of Stoker's novel. It's small and confined to a few drawing rooms. Stoker's books is so much more sprawling, so much bigger than the earliest films often suggest. Clearly: a single chapter inspired an entire major motion picture!
Occasionally, a "Dracula" movie will actually capture the gripping scope of Stoker's original work, like Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film "Bram Stoker's Dracula." But even that version cuts down the final hunt for Dracula to make room for swooning romance not found in the source material. It's a terrific movie, but come on: Why do so many filmmakers excise the most exciting part of the book?
An adventure story inside a vampire story
So, let me paint the picture for you. Imagine a sequel to "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" (maybe Øvredal is back, but the cast has to be largely new for obvious reasons) that picks up deep in the final stretch of Stoker's original novel. The vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing leads his motley crew of vengeful citizens (each with their own motivation and skillset that makes them a valuable member of the team!) into Dracula's London lair. The vampire has fled. So they burn it to the ground. And then they go on the hunt. And along the way, the hunters become the hunted and vice versa, as each side attempts to lure the other into a deadly trap en route to Dracula's haven in Transylvania for the final showdown. Dracula himself remains largely in the shadows, an unseen force leaving chaos in his wake. The human team face horror after horror as they pursue their quarry, their shared history unfolding throughout the adventure.
Like "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," it would expand upon and modify Stoker's work when necessary, but it would also dig into the areas of his work that have been profoundly neglected. Dracula isn't just an immortal character — he's an immortal concept, capable of weathering over a century's worth of films, TV shows, books, comics, toys, video games, and breakfast cereals. As long as we're capable of telling stories, we're capable of bringing Dracula back from the dead in a new form. And that's what makes Stoker's book so exciting in 2023. It's still scary as hell, and there are still elements of it that haven't been given their time of day.
You know you want it. You know you want the rich guy to arrange the funds. For the cowboy to load his six-shooters. For the doctor to plan for the worst. For the vampire hunter to prep the weapon kits. For the solicitor to realize he's the weak link in a team of experts. For poor Mina to find herself the lynchpin in the hunt for the monster that killed her best friend and set its sights on her. What a movie that would be. I hope we see it one day.